


The American Way: Team Cap drabbles

by newredshoes



Category: Agent Carter (TV), Captain America (Movies), Generation Kill, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-11
Updated: 2016-08-11
Packaged: 2018-08-08 04:32:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 37
Words: 10,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7743511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/newredshoes/pseuds/newredshoes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collected MCU drabbles from Tumblr and Dreamwidth</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The new arm; the first meeting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-20  
> theladyscribe: the first time the Winter Soldier wakes after being in stasis

"He panicked, Dr. Zola," the tech said between gasps. "He -- he panicked about the arm."

Zola was too angry to do much else than survey the damage. Even without turning his head, though, he could see how the subject had brutalized the room: restraints ripped out, glass smashed, a pair of surgical scissors jammed into another tech's thigh.

The subject himself sat crumpled in a corner, the tranquilizer dart bobbing in his neck as he breathed. He was glassy-eyed and still, save that he worried at his shoulder with his own hand.

"For god's sake, dose him again," Zola snapped. "Your job is to go near him."

The subject moaned, and scraped the metal shoulder across the wall behind him.


	2. Falsworth and Carter, after the war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-20  
> andrealyn: I would LOVE LOVE LOVE some Falsworth & Peggy bonding post WWII, whether gen or 'shippy, I'm good with either, but it has interested me for a few weeks now ~~damn JJ Feild for turning up in Musketeers~~

"I don't know how you do it," he says as he pours the next few fingers of Scotch.

Peggy gives him the benefit of a crooked eyebrow. "You did it."

"Yes, well. Someone had to counter all that bombast." He lifts his own glass in a small toast, a pause that he hasn't given up. "Then I came home when it was all over."

"Well." She clicks her teeth together. "It's not over and my home is where my work is."

Falsworth swirls his tumbler. "Work is a lot less fun than people."

"When you can't find the right people, at least there's always work."

"Yes," he says quietly, and they drink in silence for a time after that.


	3. Bucky's first meal as a free man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-20  
> lilacsigil: Bucky's first meal as a free man.

He gets hungry so fast he assumes he's always been hungry. That's equilibrium; that's normal. Even when he's alone in the field, he's watching, working. The handlers see to his meals, always what's most useful. He doesn't taste it anymore.

He's been loose for a day and a half now, eighteen hours since the bridge, the end of the line, the riverbank. The hunger is a bruise, a wound, something he can ignore only for so long. What he needs is -- what will keep him fighting --

The smell of cooking oil, this early in the morning. His balance wavers on the inside. Disjunction: a sensation of an ocean breeze, a pier. He flinches away, but there's no one near to jostle him. The hot dog vendor watches him warily, but not with fear.

He's not in uniform. He's shabby, unshaven, ragged, hollow-cheeked. The heat is already rising; beneath the thin jacket, sweat runs along the seam of his arm.

The hot dog vendor avoids eye contact, until he can't anymore, until the soldier hovers at the cart, staring. "Can I get you something?" the vendor asks.

This won't fill him. This won't do anything for him. But he can't shake something, that smell, the noise of a crowd, the cries of gulls, an elbow to the ribs. A hole where there might have been a name.


	4. The Winter Soldier as sergeant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-20  
> ashen_key: Bucky, and handling being a sergeant when he was drafted in the first place. (Particularly as he, Dum-Dum, and Gabe all seemed to be part of the same group according to one of CA's deleted scenes)

Hell of a mission: Jakes had never been on one like it. Of course, it had taken him years to work up the ranks to be allowed to audition for a spot supporting the elite and infrequent Winter Soldier unit. Soon as he'd heard it was coming back into commission, he fought tooth and nail to make sure everyone knew he intended to be on that strike team. For all that, in the end, it was only that McClinnock had recommended him. Jakes was glad of it: hell of a goddamn mission.

Nicaragua, one of these old jailed guerrilla fighters who'd decided to run the country as a reformer. Hadn't given up his ways, though. They had a hell of a time getting close, and all he and his team were doing was clearing the way. The Winter Soldier rode with them in the trucks: he gave Jake chills. He'd been obsessed with this guy for nine years, all those rumors, all those stories from the guys who'd seen him work. Jakes watched him like a shy schoolgirl, awestruck by the stare, the uniform, the arm. He didn't think the guy even noticed him.

Things went FUBAR almost as soon as they went in the field. These Nicaraguan shits were much better than even they had expected. Getting into that compound was a hell of a firefight. Jakes knew he wouldn't get to see Winter Soldier work, that they were making the big noise that gave him cover to slip in and make a statement. But he didn't really look forward to dying so that could happen, and that was starting to look more and more like a possibility.

Goddamn, it happened so fast. One minute the Nicaraguans had them pinned down, the next, the big guy was right next to him, pointing. "Stay down," came a voice from behind the mask. "Left flank, two at a time." It was a rough voice, but young. Jakes couldn't even see his eyes, but -- shit, he was taking care of them. Jakes dropped into the mud and crawled where he was directed. The flank collapsed in no time. They were all back in their vehicle inside twenty minutes. Winter Soldier didn't acknowledge any of them.

Later, McClinnock brought him down into the facility, as a treat. Jakes saw the guy's face for the first time through that little window, cold and pale and rimed with a little frost. He was a nice-looking kid under all that armor: Jakes wasn't expecting that. "Hell of a mission," he said again. "Better'n anything I could have expected."

"Sure was something," McClinnock agreed.

Jakes grabbed his elbows. "He always like that?"

"Like what?"

He nodded toward the window. "Checking in like that. I always thought it was acceptable if we didn't make it back."

McClinnock rolled his shoulders. "Well. Word is he was a sergeant during the war."

Jakes raised his eyebrows. You heard rumors, but McClinnock was only a step or two removed from the real bigwigs. "Saved our asses," Jakes finally said. "I'm proud I was part of that."

"You did good there too," McClinnock said, and held out his hand. "Next time we need you, I'll let you know. Keep on your toes."

"Just say the word," Jakes said, all eagerness. "Any time."

Behind the window, blue-lipped and fragile-looking, Jakes' next chance slept on.


	5. Sam's thoughts on the VA

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-20  
> skygiants: Sam Wilson and/or Steve and anything VA-related?

"What do you miss about it?"

Sam shakes his head. "I do miss the people. I don't miss the party line. _No, we can't speed up your disability application. Yes, we know you've been waiting two years. Sure, we're doing everything we can. Have you thought of trying to open a small business?_ But was it cool, to talk someone through translating their service into resume points? Helping a mess hall administrator get a job running a boxing club? Yeah. That part was good, when it paid off. Little less of an adrenaline rush, though."

Steve pulls a face, a small one. "But no one's shooting at you."

"No one's shooting at me," Sam confirms. "Doesn't mean I never broke up fights, though."

"You ever think about getting back in?"

He snorts. "If we take down Hydra and SHIELD and build something better? Shoot, the VA could do worse than put me in charge. At least that's a job that's commensurate with my experience."


	6. Sam and his wingman

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-20  
> moetushie: Sam Wilson, losing his wingman (and getting a new one.)

People talk like Sam didn't need something too, that duty and the pleasure of serving with Captain Rogers was enough. Yeah, it's amazing, and yeah, it was his job to step up, but you start to think after a while that the only way to fill holes is to find someone with an equally big hole, and Sam knew, Sam knew that a guy like Steve Rogers would carry around one hell of an empty.

And he's needed at the VA, he's really, truly needed, but it's so easy to get lost -- all the paperwork, the backlog, the desperate faces of Vietnam-era guys, Gulf War guys who never came in, who finally admit they need to see someone about that persistent cough or the tremor in their hands. That's the long waiting days without the joy of having a unit; that's trench warfare all alone. Sam needs someone to need him in an instant, to demand his best on the spot and get it. (Sam Wilson's best is so good, they don't know what to do with him.)

Loss like they've known, you don't try to move in. But you can build something right next door. It's his great pleasure that he and Steve are building out together.


	7. The Steve Peggy keeps with her

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-21  
> thatyourefuse: Skinny Steve and Peggy. In whatever context.

She talks to him for years, of course, and he's different from conversation to chat. Some days he's in his dress uniform, like he was in those early days wandering the SSR labs. Some days he's ragged and roughed up, grimy-cheeked, whether in his tricolor or his rumpled bomber jacket. But the days she guards most jealously (and questions herself for, in her honest moments) are the days he comes to her small, shorter than her, that pinched, unsmiling face that was used to too little and never hoped to fill out. Dr. Erskine's Steve. Sgt. Barnes' Steve. She might be the only one who has him left.

The Captain was smart, tough, kind, compassionate, unassuming. She watched him once take stock of his surroundings and knock out eight enemy combatants, simply by applying force and calculating angles with his shield. _That's what one does with an art degree,_ she'd thought, which still made her smile.

But sometimes, when she needs to wrestle with the hardest questions, the messiness that one can't throw oneself into on a suicide mission, the delicate compromises that became more everyday, she feels him at her shoulder, all essence, all conviction. Nothing extraneous but what's right.

 _Could I look you in the eye after I've done this thing?_ she'll ask herself.

It was hopeless, sometimes, of course. He'd always love her. She'd seen it in all his faces.


	8. Hill and Fury never discussed these preparations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-21  
> schweedie: Maria Hill (and Nick Fury). How does she know she has to take him? Does she know, or does she just hope?

They never rehearsed this. Fury told her to have a plan, and she made several. When she imagined this moment, the plans and outcomes played out and recombined and fell apart like DNA. It often calmed Hill, to sort through the most and least likelies, to let events fall where they would and to slice through them, her most advantageous path. Kind of like Tetris: the order and the inevitables soothed her and helped her act.

She couldn't settle into this one. She put too much of herself into those tears at the OR window. Her guts roiled, not to tell Natasha.

He slept on out of spite before he woke. That's what kept her sitting by his side.


	9. Bucky starts to talk about his past

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-04-24  
> batyatoon: Bucky starting to talk about the past (either WS-period or pre-war) at a moment when neither Steve nor Sam is expecting it.

Sam was wrong about this: Bucky slalomed back into himself, once his bloodstream wasn't swimming in Hydra drugs, and like Steve, his body worked fast. Bucky tore the door off its hinges at the hotel near Rockford. It hadn't been two weeks since the Triskelion fell. Sam was ready to tackle him, but Bucky went straight for Steve, his face a bombed-out building, and gripped his jacket in both fists as he clung to him.

"Yo, they're going to notice that," Sam tried to say, in the stunned quiet that none of them could shake.

"We should go." Steve put his hands on Bucky's shoulders, on both of them. "Buck, you ready? C'mon, let's get out of here."

"Where're we going?" He looked from Steve to Sam, eyes bigger than they had any right to be. "I'll go anywhere but back. Where're we going?"

Nobody knew. They'd planned on this taking a lot longer. But Bucky didn't need deprogramming, he just needed. They didn't plan over the next few weeks, just took themselves out of the world for a little while. Sam didn't relax much; he kept an eye on Bucky, who was mostly interested in Steve. They never let him drive, and he only rode shotgun with Steve, but he was an odd companion, to say the least. He could go days without talking, then suddenly he'd wake up all smiles, eager to spend a couple hours at some greasy spoon in some nowhere town, just chatting. That Bucky, Sam could see how you'd like him. Too bad he'd seen the Winter Soldier in action too, and there was just no forgetting him, not once, not ever.

Steve was asleep in the front one night, Sam driving through some interminable stretch of Kansas. It always seemed to be Kansas that did this, the year-round equivalent of watching snow in your headlights. Bucky had been quiet, staring out the window whenever Sam checked his rearview.

"I don't know what year it was," he began, and Sam went stiff.

"What was that?"

"I said I don't have a feel for what year it was." Bucky caught his eye in the mirror. "It wasn't in this country. East of the Curtain, but nowhere I'd ever been before." He looked back out the window. "I had a mission in a forest. Real big trees. Just me, no strike team. Seventeen hours before I got my shot. Even on a mission, you notice things that are extra. That happens to you, right?"

"Afghanistan was beautiful," Sam said at last.

Bucky nodded. "I'd never seen so many stars before. I still don't know much about 'em."

Sam's eyebrows went up. "You're telling me you were off-point long enough for a good look at the night sky?" He had to be bullshitting. Sam had a hard time, from what he'd seen and heard, believing there was a single nice or unnecessary moment in Winter Soldier's career.

Bucky went quiet again, dropped his eyes. In the passenger seat, Steve stirred, then squinted at Sam. "You guys yammering?"

"Just telling him about Chajoux," said Bucky, his voice careful and neutral again.

"Oh my god." Steve grinned and turned toward Sam. "We found this hilltop one night on a campaign. Really peaceful. We just sat there staring for a while. You've never seen so many stars."

"You got a good feeling from it," said Bucky.

"Yeah," said Sam, frowning into the rearview. "I get that."


	10. Captain Northumbria

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-05-26  
> samskeyti: That time travelly thing where Captain America meets Captain Northumbria.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (The Shakespeare play you're looking for on this one is _Henry IV Part 1_!)

Nope: the man on horseback was still there when Steve woke up, only now they were sitting by a fire, and Steve had never seen the night sky so black.

"I am ill inclined to understand why any fellow should make himself so gaudy," the stranger said, in an almost impenetrable accent and an odder still diction. "And then to arm himself not with sword nor spear not even a knife, but a shield only that invites offenses -- why, sirrah, 'tis certain there's a marvelous trick at play. What sayest thou?"

Hands and ankles tied -- wonderful. "I'm sorry," he tried. "There's some kind of misunderstanding. My name is Steve Rogers, and I need to be in New York."

"New?" The man scoffed. "North as it is, we are a long way from York. What business brings thee?"

"It's not business, it's a terrible mistake."

"I'll not say thee nay to that. Once more, sirrah, who art thou, and what?"

The man's sword rested too easily at his side. Steve knit his brow. "Who am I talking to?"

"The captain of this country, if I may make bold, by my father's title and my own deeds." He smiled crookedly. "Harry Percy, if I let thee live."

"Oh God," Steve mumbled, because he'd read his Shakespeare, and because Stark Industries had no business overseeing whatever that device they'd captured really did, and because immediately he had visions of Tony Stark and Hotspur literally butting heads before coming to terms with each other.


	11. Bucky versus the iPod

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-05-26  
> schweedie: Sam introducing Bucky to the iPod. :D

"Barton gave it to me," he explains as Bucky scrolls through the list of artists, frowning. "I still don't like to run with it, but it's interesting for podcasts and--"

"Pod-what? Is that anything to do with pod people?"

"Don't be an old man," Steve says easily. "It's basically episodes of radio shows."

"Why are you explaining this to me?" Bucky wags the iPod in his left hand. "I'm more high-tech than you could ever dream of." When Steve hesitates, he grins. "I get to make those jokes forever, come on."

Steve manages a laugh. "Anyway, there's some good music on there. Some surprises."

Bucky's already found the Most Played list. He frowns at one name. "Neko Case?"

Steve shrugs. "If I'm Captain America, apparently I should be listening to more Americana."

A snort. "What, are you saying there's more to the U.S. than Brooklyn? I don't believe it." Bucky pops one earbud in; a room-filling voice buzzes tinnily from the dangling speaker. _Old John the Baptist, Old John divine, leather harness 'round his line..._ "This is old-timey," Bucky says approvingly. "Everything old is new again."

"Give Tom Waits a try, I bet you'll like him."

"Will I?"

"Mm. And Mariah Carey. She's very gritty and real."

Bucky gives him a skeptical look. "Now you're just playing with me."

"What, me?" Steve holds up his palms. "Try shuffle if you don't believe me. Just remember they're Barton's songs, not mine."


	12. Steve discovers food trucks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-05-26  
> gramarye1971: Steve Rogers discovers the joys of food trucks. ^_^

It was the kimchi hot dog that drew Steve in first. 

If he was going to be out in Los Angeles, and especially with Tony's sense of keeping appointments or budgeting time, he might as well explore the city, and he'd heard wonderful things about LACMA. Even before he reached the art museum, though, he stopped and wondered at the long rows of food trucks up and down the street. It's not that eating from carts was odd to him -- he did grow up in the Depression, after all -- but the sheer variety of combinations was a little staggering and more than a little delightful.

He hadn't actually known what kimchi was before he tried it, but it was delicious on a frank.

The trip to L.A. didn't take long (he saw more of Miss Potts than Tony, which he couldn't find fault with), but back in D.C., he started looking out for more trucks. The District didn't disappoint: beyond the usual cupcakes, shwarma, pizza and tamales, Steve discovered jerk chicken, bao, meatloaf cupcakes (with mashed potato frosting), fusion pasties and the empanada guys who wore lucha libre masks beneath huge sombreros.

"You're turning into Six-Dinner Sid," Natasha remarked one day as they finished a helping of savory Thai-inspired crepes. "You know, the cat that gets dinner from six different families."

Steve shrugged. "I'm supporting the little guy. And besides, my gut can take it."

"You do have a whole lot to make up for."

He held up the remains of his crepe. "Better than boiling."

She smiled. "And Army food."


	13. For once, Bucky has a good day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-05-26  
> yakalskovich: Post-Winter Soldier: Bucky having a good day for once, everything is okay and nothing hurts. Still, do feel free to make the background as heart-wrenching as you like.

The call came in from Seattle, of all places. Steve and Sam had last had word of Bucky in West Texas somewhere; Puget Sound was a big jump off the grid. 

"And just where was all this again?" Steve asked the pleasant-looking young woman in the Skype window.

"The aquarium," she said. "He stayed the whole day. He was so chatty and enthusiastic, we just thought he worked here, to mingle with the visitors."

Sam frowned. "Chatty? Are you sure?"

"Oh yes." She smiled. "Very charming, once he warmed up. I sat with him for about forty minutes in the tropical exhibit, just looking around at everything."

"He say anything to you? Anything that seemed out of place?"

"No." Their source shrugged and shook her head. "Said the belugas were really something else. Oh, and he narrated the otters for a couple of little kids. He could have handed his number out to everyone in the room." It may have been the light of the computer, but she seemed to blush and look very pleased with herself.

Steve sat back. "He's practicing."

Sam kept frowning. "For what?"

Steve allowed himself a smile. "Getting back in the world."


	14. Hipster ketchup

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-05-26  
> hannah: As Bruce is currently living in New York City, it's no trouble for him to find the sort of southeast Asian and Indian cooking he got to know and love while living in that part of the world. And as Steve and Thor are both very interested in eating new things, Bruce invites them to come along one night.

"Tony told me I should try sriracha," says Steve. "He called it 'hipster ketchup.'"

Thor finishes slurping his pho. "Are you a hipster?"

"Pretty sure he's the opposite of a hipster," says Bruce, methodically ripping up basil stalks and dumping them in his bowl.

Steve squirts the sriracha over his noodles and studies it floating in the broth. "I like the color. That's a good red."

"Enjoy it while it lasts," says Bruce. "The town where they make it might shut the plant down."

Thor knits his brow. "Why would they?"

"I guess it makes the air impossible to breathe or something? Little things."

"In Svartlheim once--"

The noise Steve makes as his eyes water and he grabs the nearest glass of water (which happens to be Thor's) makes heads turn all over the little hole-in-the-wall.

"Oh, oh gosh," says Bruce, trying not to smile. "It is kinda spicy if you're not used to it. I guess that wasn't standard-issue in the '40s."

"It's not that," Steve manages. "It's the serum. Amplified everything -- including taste buds."

Curious, Thor reaches for the bottle of sriracha and liberally douses what's left of his pho.

"I'll get used to it," Steve says, and wipes his eyes. "Phwew! Wow. Pretty good once you get past that, though."

"Yeah," says Bruce. "Maybe we'll work our way up to the vindaloo."


	15. The great American road trip

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-05-27  
> walksbyherself: Steve and Bucky's great American road trip (bonus points for cheesy _Supernatural_ -esque motels or bad chain restaurants)

"No, I've seen Wisconsin. No interest in Indiana. I'd stop in Chicago, but we should go somewhere I've never been before."

Bucky has been a lot of places, but not everywhere.

*

The face Steve makes over the plate of corned beef hash is worth a photo, and Bucky, who has discovered Instagram, takes his chance.

"What did I just eat?" 

"What?" Bucky swipes a finger through a daub of ketchup; his plate's long since clean. "This doesn't remind you of army food?"

*

Bucky complains about Garrison Keillor (and just about everything else on NPR), but they listen to _A Prairie Home Companion_ in a field in Nebraska, just sitting on the trunk looking up at the stars.

*

The sea lions in La Jolla are a huge hit. Someone later finds the Vine of Bucky being chased off by one, hooting with laughter, but somehow the video is found to be fake before anyone can launch a manhunt.

*

It turns out the Winter Soldier carried out a mission in Laramie once. Steve pushes even the Wyoming speed limit to get them out of there quick, to put it behind them and out of sight.

*

"Shut up, I tan beautifully," says Bucky, folding his hands behind his head in a motion strategically designed to flash sun in Steve's eyes. "You're the one who's blinding and white." 

Waves lap at the sand beyond their folding chairs. The Gulf Coast of Alabama is peaceful in a way Steve hasn't seen a beach in years.

"Yeah, yeah," he says, smiling, and slathers more Coppertone everywhere he can.


	16. For the woman who knows what she wants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-07-16  
> siria: Peggy Carter and lipstick, please :D

She was told she was too young for it long after she wanted it for herself. "A sweet thing like you doesn't need to cover herself with paint," her mother said, over and over again. Peggy had to find her own help, when she wanted to try powder, when she sampled then scrubbed off perfume, when she wanted silks and nylons but taught herself to shave her legs.

She longed for it after a trip to the pictures, those starlets with their Cupid's bow lips anchoring bright faces. It took her years of sneaking and trading with other girls to find her color, hers: a darker matte, almost bloody, in a slick false gold tube, "Garnet Girl."

Peggy came as near as she ever did to panicking when the war came and the manufacturers changed all their product names. She searched for it again, on her own time, with her own money, with her head held high, but she passed through several that were too pink, too orange, too bright.

"Grenadier" it was called when she found it again. She found she couldn't disapprove. This was always going to be her color, from the time she couldn't convince her mum that she would never be sweet like that.


	17. Troll-hunting with the Howling Commandos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JUL. 17 2014  
> Alicia: Howling Commandos drabble? What did Bucky tell Steve about these guys? Or, HC on their smoke out HYDRA tour, making camp and talking trash. Let your Band of Brothers feels run wild :-)

Steve has good hunches about people, but especially in cases like assembling your own team, it’s important to back up those hunches with evidence.

“Who are the guys I want?” he’d asked Bucky on the long walk back to camp.

“What, you’re saying you need guys?” Bucky had smiled, but it was a tentative smile, a _what the hell is our dynamic now?_ smile, an _I need to know you still need me_ remark.

“You know them, you’ve fought with them and I trust you,” Steve said.

Bucky, who still looked sallow and shaken even as he marched, scanned the column of men. “Hmm.”

Which is how, once they’re back in London, Steve winds up asking Falsworth what it was like growing up alongside the royal family (Falsworth blinks politely and demurs that he’s only country nobility), why he tries to get the story straight about Morita’s pirate radio capabilities (Morita has not yet hijacked an Axis Sally broadcast, though he has ideas) and how he stumbles into promising a field test of Dugan’s highest-count drinking night (beers and bar fights both eligible).

“Jones I like,” Steve says as they’re turning down for the evening. Bucky is looking better, more like himself, though he still seems a bit rough around the edges, brittle and unkempt like he never was in Brooklyn.

“Gabe is great,” he says, tugging off one boot. “He went to college. We stayed close in Italy.”

Steve’s eyebrows go up. “Because he went to college?”

“Because he reminds me of you,” Bucky says, unlacing the other. Steve only has a moment to absorb that, before Bucky’s mouth quirks. “He’s lousy at cards.”

He laughs, and Bucky stretches out on his creaking mattress. He’s still smiling to himself, though, and Steve takes his word for it.


	18. Steve is a terrible newsie

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> JUN. 27 2014  
> isjustprogress: I just want a drabble on Steve/Bucky Captain America pre-serum. I'm open to anything. BUT I HAVE A LOT OF FEELINGS.

“Bucky.” Steve’s eyes were round as silver dollars. “Where did you get these?”

Bucky shrugged and hefted his pile of broadsheets up under his arm again. “I just did, okay? Look, we sell these, we keep the money, that’s enough to get us both to Coney Island.”

“You sure you didn’t—”

“I did not steal them.” He said it so vehemently, it was definitely a lie. He covered by shoving half the newspapers at Steve. “We’ll do it on opposite corners, all right? It’ll take half as long.”

Steve looked down at the headline. The papers were already starting to make his arms hurt. “What do I?”

“What do you mean, what do you do? You shout at people and get their money and get rid of these. It’s not building rockets!” Bucky grinned. Bucky had a way of grinning that inspired confidence in Steve, right until he walked away and thought about it more.

It seemed simple enough, and if Bucky really hadn’t knocked over Bill Hendricks, who usually newsied at this intersection, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

But Steve figured he ought to know something about the news he was hawking. Which was why, when Bucky crossed the street, pockets full and hands empty, Steve was still sitting on top of his pile, nose-deep in the World Happenings section. Bucky gaped at him.

“What’re you doing?”

Steve frowned. “Bucky, someone shot the president of Mexico. Don’t you think—hey!”

He hopped to his feet as Bucky yanked the newspapers from under him. “You’re hopeless,” Bucky said, shaking his head, and ran to chase down the next commuter he could.


	19. Steve and Natasha, forced to share a bed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-08-11   
> theladyscribe: Steve/Natasha forced to share a bed!

Rooms in Paris come even smaller than they do in New York.

This wasn't actually the place he'd paid for tonight, but running into Natasha can change your plans like that. In the morning, he'd left a modest but clean B&B with hopes of tracking down a certain expert neurologist; now, after a long chase and several gunfights through an outer banlieu, he and Natasha are holed up, quite literally, in the last run-down garret in Montmartre.

He's surprised, the way it gives him pangs. Clint got him into these comic books once, where toward the end of the run, a character who'd been alive since the Middle Ages could only feel at home in a condemned building. Steve's not always sure people understand what wealth and modernity really mean, that the way the world had gotten richer usually had to do with what no one notices anymore.

Natasha, whom he's seen in couture and trenches alike, has taken up a spot on the narrow twin bed, her spine against the scrubby wall. "Steve," she says, and it's in her face, the order (or the strong suggestion) that they both need to rest, even them. There's no room on the floor, and he's slept head-to-toe with worse.

When he stretches out, Natasha curls around him, her left arm looped under his. He almost protests, but there's no advance in this, just the heat and mass of her body close to his. He stares at the door, brows knitted. They'd interrupted something today. Bucky was on the same path they were, and they'd missed him, probably not by much, thanks to that firefight with who knows who. Nat had seen it too, the smashed library, the obscenely broken neck. It was the most tangible trail they'd had yet, and it flooded him. It comes out now, a stuttering sigh.

"I'd have done the same, if I'd been loose instead of with SHIELD," Natasha says.

"Would you have come in?"

"I did," she murmurs. "The right person asked me."

Steve pulls in on himself, as much as he can, as if he didn't take up most of this bed. He feels her fingers run up through the short hairs at the back of his neck. Natasha breathes quietly, evenly. Steve tries to relax; he's still surprised by how much tension releases in his face, that it just moves deeper inside himself, down into his belly. He tries to match her breathing, the press of her ribs against his. She doesn't say a thing, just keeps on stroking his hair.

He bows his head, and closes his eyes against her fingertips on his bare neck. The small hand pressed to his chest, he reaches for it.


	20. Steve and Sam accidentally get a baby

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-08-11  
> siria: Sam/Steve, accidental baby-acquisition?

He's probably not supposed to say it, but Steve is grateful that Sam bought the "dad diapers" with arrows and instructions printed right there on the tabs. It's less that he's confounded by non-cloth diapers than that the last time he saw babies being changed with any regularity was when Becca Barnes was small and Bucky was wrinkling his nose, wondering out loud as he cleaned her up how he'd ever look her in the eye when they'd grown. (As it happened, Bucky and Becca got along famously; Steve regretted that she'd died in 1999, long before any of them would have had the chance to reunite.)

"Dude," says Sam, frowning over his shoulder. "When was the last time you--"

"1928," Steve says, focusing on a tab that's not quite as sticky as it should be. Meanwhile, Baby Jane Doe kicks and squalls impatiently. "Come on, come on," he mutters, pressing down and hoping that does the trick as he lifts her.

Baby Jane Doe keeps on howling. Steve tries rocking her, cradling her, bouncing her; she spits up angrily all over his shoulder.

"Good Lord, you're making me crazy." Sam holds out his hands. "They were right about you and women. Hey, sweetness, come here, I got you."

Sam spends the next hour gloating about his pararescue touch, even while Baby Jane Doe sleeps until his arms fall asleep.


	21. Bodyswap/reunion

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2014-08-11  
> phoenixchilde: Because I'm still forever emotionally compromised by these two trolls: Steve and Bucky, bodyswap.

Steve is sure he went to sleep in a Best Western somewhere outside of Pigeon Forge. He went to sleep on his bed, with Sam in the next bed over. He wore a t-shirt and boxers, and he'd been curled up on his side.

This is the first reason it startles him to wake sitting upright, wedged between two tree roots in a downpour, encased in black leather.

When he cries out, not in his own tones, and when his metal arm scrabbles for purchase, that's when the ground swoops beneath him and he has to still himself through sheer force of will. Lank, dripping hair frames his vision; there's stubble beneath his palm when he rubs his face. That's the Winter Soldier's uniform binding him shoulders to feet; that's Bucky's voice when he finally swears.

What surprises him, after the shock -- doesn't wear off, but becomes manageable, is that Bucky's body is astonishingly like his own. His hearing, his eyesight, his strength, it feels familiar. Now Steve is certain Bucky held back in hand-to-hand.

He shifts again, looks around for possessions or some indication of where he is. No guns or duffle in sight, but Steve does catch sight of something that stops up breath: the Best Western, his room perfectly visible through a gap in the trees.

Oh god.

Bucky's body runs as fast as Steve pushes it, with more in reserve. He barely notices the metal arm; it clenches and pumps as naturally as the flesh one. Steve barrels and skids down the muddy hills, pounds across the parking lot and nearly breaks through the room door before checking himself.

"Sam?" he calls, pressed to one side of it.

Bullets smash through the wood and the window. Inside, Sam yells.

The metal arm easily splinters the rest of the door. Steve halts at the sight of himself, eyes wide and feral, with Sam in a headlock and the gun pointing at his temple.

"Bucky," he says, and holds up both hands. "Bucky, don't."

"Stay back," Bucky snarls, like Steve never had or could.

Sam's eyes dart between the two of them.

Steve swallows. "How long have you been that close, Buck?"

Bucky frowns harder. The gun doesn't waver. Steve -- has to laugh. "Is this what it took to get you to come back?"


	22. Quinoa gets a robot suit

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SEP. 21 2014  
> septembriseur: OBVIOUSLY I'M GOING TO ASK FOR QUINOA IN A ROBOT SUIT

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Follows the therapy llama fic, ["The Good, the Bad and the Fluffy"](http://archiveofourown.org/works/2214642)

“Your concept is flawed,” rasps Barnes, which is about as many words as Tony has ever heard him string together at once.

Tony lets his measuring tape zip back inside its shell. “Hey, don’t get down on me, buddy. She goes where you go, and you go some pretty dangerous places, if we’re both perfectly honest.”

“No,” says Barnes.

“No… you don’t go dangerous places, or no on llama armor?”

“She’s my service animal.”

“Ah, so you’re going to fall back on teleology.”

Barnes frowns. “I know what it means,” he snaps, before Tony can even get going again.

Quinoa, sporting an awful lot of tinsel this morning, sniffs at Dummy, who’s quite abashed at all the attention.

Tony holds up his hands. “Okay. Okay, you’re skeptical. I get that. But listen, I’ve borne the brunt of Quinoa’s fury, and I think she could be a real, well.”

“Asset?”

Barnes is just glaring now, but it might be an “I’m in on the joke” glare. Tony hopes. It could also be an “I’ve already memorized the HVAC system from the inside and will kill you in your sleep” glare.

“You… are going to go into the field with us, right?” Tony ventures. He’d sort of been counting on it, if only to shut Rogers up for like, twenty minutes about it.

Barnes just shakes his head, and tugs on Quinoa’s reins. Quinoa grunts, and Dummy likewise wilts at being so cruelly abandoned.

“Wait! Wait wait wait! JARVIS?” Tony waves his hands. “Prototype, please.”

It’s just a hologram suit, sure, but it’s one hell of a suit. Barnes stares. Quinoa yawns, totally nonplussed, as usual, by her finery.

“I, uh.” Tony scratches the back of his head. “Worked in some details you might like.”

Simulated LED lights dance and scroll over the surface of the armor, like deep-sea creatures that have just discovered Lisa Frank.

Barnes is still frowning. It’s not a frown that Tony can remotely interpret. “What do you think?” he finally has to ask. 

“It doesn’t have to be functional, does it?” Barnes hugs his elbows. “I mean… we could just… build that because we should build that. Right?”

“You’re going to make all my calculations for llama-appropriate repulsors go to waste?”

Barnes makes a suitably Bucky-esque face, one that really might have come from the 1940s. “You’re breaking my heart, pal.”

Quinoa strains at her reins, back toward Dummy. Tony starts. “Where did you get that? Dummy, no. You can’t buy your way into a lady’s heart like that.”

Dummy whirrs and twirls the carrot clamped hopefully aloft.


	23. Swing dancing: Observation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> AUG. 14 2014  
> cosmictuesdays: Steve/Bucky, swimming or dancing.

The bar is called Fizz, and on Monday nights, they host a live band and four straight hours of swing dancing. 

The first few times they went, Bucky had just stared for most of the night. “We never did that,” he’d murmur from time to time. But then he’d start to grin, and add, “But I like it.” The moves, the outfits, the makeup, the hair, it was only glancingly “period.” Steve would watch him.

“You want to get in there?”

But Bucky would just shake his head.

This went on for weeks. Each Monday, after every other day of training or adjusting or fighting like old friends, Bucky would start getting ready, earlier and earlier, impatient without knowing he was. Steve sometimes pretended to take longer than he’d need, because Bucky would, when he thought no one was looking, shuffle in time near the door: quick-quick slow, slow; quick-quick slow, slow.

Tonight, Steve sits alone at the bar, his arms crossed over his chest. A lady, who’s obviously been wanting to, sashays up to him, smiling. “You want to dance?” she asks, and he gives her a well-practiced smile.

“I never learned how. You probably want someone better." 

She grins. “I teach here. You can follow, if you want.”

"Thanks.” He smiles. “I’m just here to watch, though.”

She follows his eye to the floor. Bucky hasn’t stopped all night. He moves smoothly, confidently, with as much grace as anyone could employ. It jars Steve to see him like that; he’ll get flashes of that footwork from the fight on the bridge, or the sparring session he watched last night, but even those were tinged with the dancing first. Bucky was always trying to get him to come see what the fuss was about, back when they were young, before.

That looks like his friend — one hand on a pretty girl’s hip, coasting and swinging all over the floor; the way Bucky’s face has relaxed, the way he smiles, the way he guides and leads and lets them get close.

Steve’s would-be partner pulls an appreciative face. He laughs. “You should ask him. He needs the practice.”

“Yeah,” she says, grinning. “But watching is pretty nice too.”


	24. Tourism in Los Angeles

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2016-01-23  
> walksbyherself: Peggy and Violet and stupid tourist things?

"You're sure you don't want a hat?" Violet squinted from under the brim of hers as Peggy slipped on her sunglasses.

"I didn't need one for two months in North Africa," she started, but stopped herself. It never came off well, unless among her own boys. Violet was already looking uncertain, and uncomfortable, to bring up the war again. It was done with, and nobody wanted to think about it much. Peggy smiled. "That's a bit of a fib. But I tan rather well. That 'English rose' nonsense was never for me."

"Well!" Violet smiled, with such enthusiasm that Peggy could see why Sousa would like her so much, her straightforward joy and sweetness without backstory. "You're going to love Venice Beach! The boardwalk is pretty shabby, but in a really fun way, you know?"

Peggy's heart constricted only a little at the word; _Coney Island_ fluttered at the back of her head, before she exhaled and let it pass. "Smashing," she said, and tugged open the door of the sedan.


	25. Ana and her spices

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2016-01-23  
> hannah: May I ask for a ficlet about Ana Jarvis having a good time with spices and Edwin slowly learning about Good Cooking?

"But, my darling," he began, and he looked so pathetically, politely baffled that Ana bit her lip to keep from kissing the tip of his nose to turn him red. "What's wrong with just butter?" he said at last.

"Butter is fine," she said, holding the plate of cookies up higher between them. "Butter is luscious and lovely and it makes everything better."

"Butter biscuits are very fine," he said. "I happen to quite enjoy a good shortbread."

She shrugged. "I am happy to experiment with butter. However, your upbringing has tricked you into believing it is a flavor. It is not a flavor; it is an ingredient. I do not find that enough, do you?"

Edwin didn't dare break eye contact as he picked up one cookie as though it might actually snap at him. "It's a rather alarming color."

"It's not alarming." Ana lifted her chin triumphantly. "It's paprika."

"What?"

"And cinnamon," she said. "I am going very gently with you, Edwin. I know you need training up for me. Why don't you try it and see how you like it before I can graduate you to the real stuff, hmm?"

He considered. "I'll do it if you will," he said, acquiescing just a little.

Ana smirked, and kept her eyes on his as they bit into the cookie at the same time.


	26. Bodily competence: Bucky and Nat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MAY. 24 2015  
> septembriseur: One of the numerous WS fics I want right now is one where he doesn't meet Natasha bc she's Steve's friend, but because they're (Avengers? New-S.H.I.E.L.D.?) teammates. So: not focused on recovery, but rather on willpower and competence. (I have a lot of thoughts about will lately.) Also: "Agent Romanoff is comfortable with everything."

He gravitates toward color, out of uniform. In that way, he’s Steve’s inverse. Today it’s a bold green t-shirt, no logo, just something defiantly comfortable.

“Snappy,” Natasha says as she drops into the seat beside him.

“I aim to impress,” says Bucky. He’s got both hands around his coffee cup. She’s sitting on his right side; he could be anybody, from here.

She nudges his knee with hers.

His mouth thins. “Stop that.”

She doesn’t.

“You’re a troll.”

“Where did you learn that word?”

Bucky rolls his eyes and takes a pointed slurp.

She leans back in her seat. “I need help with something.”

“That’s the kind of ask that used to get me in a lot of trouble.”

“I run this place. You can’t get in any trouble if I’m asking.”

“Not sure I trust that logic.”

“Aw, you’re breaking my heart, Bucky.”

“Don’t you start.”

She likes that about him, that patter calms him. He knows, better than Steve ever did, how to be someone for an occasion, for a need. Bucky used to have a flickering quality to him, static from a cathode tube, a flame, always himself but losing track of his own wholeness. When Steve remembers things, he once told her, he relives them, not like a flashback but all the same processing centers firing in his brain. Bucky walks a gauntlet every minute, eyes straight ahead.

“You bored?”

“No ma'am. I’m never bored.” He pulls his coffee closer, into his lap. She sees the line emerge, from his neck down through his shoulders, a purpose, a solidness.

“I want you to help me with something.”

He smiles. “Now that is a different question.”

*

She’d pause to watch him if she were anyone else. This is what she won’t change about herself, though. There’s a mission. There is this moment, and the one on either side of your next heartbeat, none of it a promise.

Here they all are: two, three dozen once-were Hydra; the Black Widow; Bucky Barnes. They flatten the cell in 10 minutes, a ruthless equation, all body. They waste nothing, not words, not movement, not opportunity. When she is finished, and he is too, she demands his attention, simply with her eyes.

They face each other from across the room. Natasha breathes out, loosens her hips, lets her spine go easy. Bucky stays still, too still. He still wears black into a fight, though now he’s wearing his own face too. She feels him in the room, the soldier, the weight on the world that raises the hair on her neck.

He shifts, from one solidness to another. The line in his back changes. “In a just world, there’d be pie and coffee now.”

“Right now?” She does it naturally, that half-smile; she has to. “What am I, an automat?”

He strolls, away from the wreckage they’re leaving. “Stark’s computer wears a cape now. I’ve seen weirder.” He smiles too. “How do you know that word?”

She does watch this, how he walks toward her, how he doesn’t waver at all.


	27. The elephant and her stake

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> MAY. 24 2015  
> forest-of-stories: Bucky finds Natasha handcuffing herself to her bed? <3, Neva

“You know that thing about elephants, right?”

She’d heard him coming. She’d clicked the cuff shut when he was close enough to see. Natasha smiled. “That with a magic feather, they can fly?”

Bucky leaned against the door frame, hugging his elbows. “Never saw that one in theaters, I gotta say.”

She lets the slats in the headboard cup the back of her head. “You’re not here to save me from myself, are you?”

“Jesus, no.” He looked smaller outside his uniform, in a worn t-shirt and Ironettes pajama bottoms, only uneven if you knew where to look. When he padded toward the bed, he gave it a wide arc, to let her see him coming.

Natasha turned on her side, made room for him on the mattress. He settled in behind her, the wrist of his metal arm at her sternum’s hinge. “At least finish your metaphor,” she said. Her shoulder blade was already loose, the old trick.

“You know. Circus elephants. Get ‘em when they’re babies, tie 'em to a stake, stake won’t come up.”

“And the elephant grows up thinking it can’t rip up the stake. Yes, I’ve heard it.”

“I know you have,” said Bucky.

His smooth thumb swept back and forth over the cloth of her shirt.


	28. The Walmart Wall of Heroes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SEP. 12 2015  
> antilamentation: Cap’s Team running into Brad and Ray.

“CHECK THIS SHIT OOOOOOOOUT! Oh my god, that is some Eagle-One Actual real-life no-dipshittery star-spangled Nazi-huffing original Wal-Mart-Wall-of-Heroes _punched Hitler_ CAPTAIN AMERICA.” Ray clutched his chest. “Holy shitballs, sir, but frankly I don’t know whether to jack off or ask for a hug so I can find out if you really smell like apple pie and classy USO pussy. Sgt. Brad Colbert here has undoubtably jacked off to your picture, so no disrespect, we’re both the biggest fans of you and every single member of your crew.”

Brad stared straight ahead, right at Rogers, and gave the barest of nods. “Sir.”

Rogers nodded back. “Sergeant.”

“He is shitting his pants now,” Ray whispered to _the actual Falcon, oh my gooooooodddd._ “There is nothing he loves better than a good shit, other than maybe real-life Captain America, so he’s basically catatonic with joy, if you can’t tell.”

“I’m not shitting myself,” Brad said, still not looking away from Rogers’ face.

“That’s a relief,” said Rogers, with a totally nerdy-but-debonair smile, and Wilson, who got it, groaned.


	29. One character, 10 genres

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> SEP. 1 2015  
> Natasha; Edwin and Ana Jarvis; Bucky

_nowomanssky: natasha!_

**1\. Angst:** She’d never seen herself in a story until someone left a Chandler within snatching distance.  
**2\. AU:** “It’s not that I waste my weekends and evenings, Clint. It’s that you’re going to kiss my feet entirely of your own volition when I’ve finished sewing this costume.”  
**3\. Crack!fic Plot:** Natasha looks at the arrangement of succulents with all the seriousness of a woman cracking Enigma. “So Vision’s consciousness is really in there?”  
**4\. Crossover:** “You can trust me, Mr. McGill,” she said with a smile. “I’ve got all my bonafides.”  
**5\. First Time:** She had, in fact, once had to be told not to eat the shell of the edamame too.  
**6\. Fluff:** “Quiet,” she told him. “Don’t be grumpy, you love Brighton Beach.”  
**7\. Humor:** Maria taught her about the supremacy of the fistbump, and Nat reserved it for only the most righteous of her friends.  
**8\. Hurt/Comfort:** Everyone was watching. She had to say something. She crouched in front of Steve, his breath catching on something. “Why did you take that fall?” she hissed.  
**9\. Smut:** She knew the ratio of plates on either side of his elbow, but she counted them every time, fingers stepping up and down the arm.  
**10\. UST:** There was no touching Yelena, but she would. She would.

*

_cosmictuesdays: Edwin and Ana Jarvis, please._

**1\. Angst:** No; no American spices could make her kitchen smell like home.  
**2\. AU:** “No,” Ana sighed, “he’s a terrible knight’s squire, but he’s so elegant when he announces Sir Howard at the joust. I suppose it’s an English trait.”  
**3\. Crack!fic Plot:** Miss Carter frowned rather dreadfully at the whisk. “Trust me,” said Ana. “I know just where this can stop a man in his tracks.”  
**4\. Crossover:** That was precisely the problem with Mr. Catcher Block – precisely no one needed a younger, hipper Mr. Stark in their life, not least Mr. Stark, who was bound to get competitive.  
**5\. First Time:** To Ana’s delight, Edwin was very confident once he was certain of her enthusiastic permission.  
**6\. Fluff:** “No,” he sighed, somewhere between the pillow and her shoulder, “I am most certainly not obligated to answer that.”  
**7\. Humor:** Ana sniffed. “This is both goyische and inefficient. Allow me.”  
**8\. Hurt/Comfort:** He held her hand all the way to the ground, her other hand clutching her passport, both trembling to be back.  
**9\. Smut:** “You’re certain this is all right?” he asked, brow knitted. Ana groaned, but he really needed to be quite sure it was the right sort of groan.  
**10\. UST:** It was really a question of whether he’d be able to live with the chance that he’d walk out the door and never see her again. This, Edwin thought, while counterintuitive, was precisely the right kind of way to avert risk.

*

_animatedamerican: Bucky Barnes, if no one's asked for him yet!_

**1\. Angst:** He would have to keep cutting — he couldn’t go out in public with only one half of his head shorn. The choice was either meet his own face in the mirror or use the scissors without looking. But it was no choice to stay somewhere in between.  
**2\. AU:** “Come on, Steve, if it works for Marcus Mumford, it can damn well work for us. It’s just a vest. Put it on.”  
**3\. Crack!fic Plot:** “It’s a Cheesehead,” Barton insisted. “No one will recognize us. It’s vitally necessary, I promise.”  
**4\. Crossover:** Bucky stared at April. April stared at him. “Whatever,” she finally said. “You can have it.”  
**5\. First Time:** “You’ll poison yourself, buddy, come on.” Bucky reached past Morita for the pint. “I don’t feel anything,” he said, unnerved.  
**6\. Fluff:** Sharon smirked. “You’re sure this has nothing to do with my aunt?” Bucky pulled her closer. “That would be weird, so I’m going to say no.”  
**7\. Humor:** Nobody at Avengers Tower could have predicted Barnes would nail “Sherry” so perfectly with so little preparation.  
**8\. Hurt/Comfort:** “I don’t know you,” Bucky hissed, cradling his arm. “So I can hate you.” “I know, man,” Sam said, and let him bury his face in his shoulder.  
**9\. Smut:** She led him through it, but he remembered this; not just with Natasha, but this.  
**10\. UST:** “Are you getting that or what?” Bucky looked away from the pumpkin pie under its display case. The waitress had one eyebrow up. Bucky bit his lower lip and focused again on the pie.


	30. Pierce and slippery slopes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 2015-09-12  
> peoriapeoriawhereart: Alexander Pierce and slippery slopes.

This was in the years before he learned to control himself. It never would have started if the asset hadn't encouraged it. 

That was Pierce's first impression. On their first meeting, the asset's eyes focused; he searched Pierce's face; his jaw dropped, as if he'd speak. Nothing happened that wasn't planned, but Pierce remembered that. He'd gone into the washroom and studied his own face. Square jaw, sandy hair, good bone structure, blue eyes. So all-American. His father's stories swarmed at the back of his thoughts.

"Hey, pal, easy," he said to the Winter Soldier the next time he came in for a mission report. The asset tracked him with his eyes; something loosened in his shoulders, and his posture meant surprise. Pierce smiled. "It's good to see you again."

The Winter Soldier pulled himself back to attention. "C'mon, at ease," Pierce said, and leaned against his desk. "What do you got for me, sarge?"

His brow knit. "—I..."

Pierce grew up with those stories, the movies, the pictures: Bucky Barnes with his sniper rifle and his swagger. And here he was, not a bit changed.

Well.

After the report, the chief scientist took him aside. "Sir, we recommend that you keep things formal."

"I'm not military," Pierce insisted, and butter wouldn't melt in his mouth. "What's wrong with my way?"

"The serum heals him," the scientist said. "That's why we can do what we do, and why he does what he does. But we have to keep wiping him, you see. The brain heals too, if given encouragement."

The next time they activated the asset, Pierce watched for any sign of recognition. The Winter Soldier stood hard as glass before him. "The mission's in San Marino," Pierce said.

The asset dipped his chin, and watched him, and didn't notice a thing.


	31. Peggy's first day as director of SHIELD

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEC. 29 2015  
> walksbyherself: Peggy and the founding of SHIELD--like, literal, day one, "where do we keep the copy paper and who is answering the phones" foundation.

Peggy took it as a matter of pride to arrive early. In the war, of course, there had been no hours, only the mission, the ever-present mission that lived in and out of their very pores. In truth, she didn’t expect this new agency to be much different (she was, in fact, counting on it a little — a lot, perhaps, a lot). She could, if she so desired, exist separately from SHIELD. She could go home. She could go have a drink or go to the pictures or take a walk, just to stretch her legs. However, this was a privilege, and she intended to treat it as such.

And so, when the elevator opened on the 14th floor of the building in Midtown Howard had bought outright only the week before, she was ready to commit to the serious business she’d started at the SSR.

That ended with a triumphant shout as a golf ball came careening toward her high heels.

“Oh,” said Howard, his shirt rumpled but his mustache triumphant. “Sorry, pal, didn’t realize it’d be you coming.”

Peggy stared at the patch of scrubby green nonsense that had been rolled out in the wide space where desks were supposed to go. Howard nonchalantly propped his golf club against his shoulder.

“Mini golf! You remember these? I been working on a turf you can keep inside but don’t have to water. But mostly I just think this place needs a place where you can let off some steam, you know.” He wagged his eyebrows. “In a way you can in front of your colleagues.”

“Howard,” she said. “This is to be the main office of SHIELD.”

He gestured at the desks, which had all been pushed up against the walls and windows. “We can get another one. I own ‘em all, remember.”

“My office is on this floor. Our employees will be arriving at this floor within the next hour.”

Howard scratched his nose. “So you’re saying I should have slept somewhere else last night, with all my good ideas.”

“When you do this in the future, you do plan on sleeping here alone, I imagine?”

“Sure thing, boss.” He watched her drop her purse and coat on a nearby desk. “Say, how long before you think someone can come and take care of all this?”

Peggy did glare at him for that. And would not let him forget, in all their many years after, how they spent her first hour as director dragging all their own furniture back into place.


	32. Peggy's visitor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEC. 29 2015  
> nwhepcat: Hmmm. How about Bucky dropping in on her in the nursing home, before Steve has found him again?

That fall a year after he came back to himself, Bucky sat with Peggy as she slept, as he sometimes did. This time when she woke with a start, she took his own hand and said, _Barnes, Barnes. I dreamed we all got old, all of us._

He put his metal hand on top of hers, her sure hands gone so fragile, and said, _It wasn’t a dream, Peggy. I got old too._

And it was still strange to see Peggy like this, her face without makeup a mask he hardly recognized. But she was herself this time, and she looked him right in the eye, not afraid of this truth like others were, and she said, _You’re right. Yes, you did._


	33. Peggy's Howling Commandos debut

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEC. 29 2015  
> sylvi10: Peggy and the Howling Commandos, their first mission together.

“We’re doing this?” Dugan looked around at the rest of the guys for confirmation, though he made sure to speak decidedly out of Miss Carter’s earshot. “We’re really bringing her along?”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘following,’” said Morita, snapping some gum as he checked over one of Stark’s new machine guns. 

Dugan opened his mouth to protest and caught Bucky’s eye. Bucky shook his head. “Steve says she’s in, she’s in, no questions.”

“You really want to trust the captain when he’s so, you know…?”

Bucky raised an eyebrow. “What? When he’s so what, Dum-Dum?”

He gestured. “Moony about her!”

Bucky flat-out laughed. “Listen, Steve is many things, and smooth enough to know how to impress a woman ain’t one of ‘em. Agent Carter’s in because she’s better than all of us put together.”

“Brown-nosing or simply trying to charm me, Sgt. Barnes?”

Bucky didn’t lose a beat. “Can’t a man do both?”

She didn’t even spare Dugan a glance. “So long as those aren’t the only two things he can do at once.”

It was such big talk, he was ready to write it off. But hand on his heart, on the plane back from a surprisingly ferocious firefight in occupied Belgium, after watching Carter and Bucky swap barbs and cover each other’s back while clearing the way for Steve, it was Dugan, roaring and laughing, who swore she’d be on his tab at the local that night.


	34. Peggy, Sharon and a favorite film

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEC. 29 2015  
> animatedamerican: Peggy watches a favorite movie or listens to a favorite album with someone who has never seen/heard it before. Any era.

“I know it’s not cool for me to enjoy these things,” said Aunt Peggy, as she popped open the plastic VHS case.

“You were cool before ‘cool’!” Sharon brushed her blond bangs out of her eyes. “I was looking at slang etymologies, and it was a jazz thing.”

Aunt Peggy chuckled. “We certainly had jazz when I was a girl! But yes, no one said ‘cool’ during the war, it’s true.” She popped the tape into the VCR, which sucked it inside and whirred as it began reeling. “But this one’s my favorite from when your mum was a teenager. She was terribly in love with these boys. I never heard the end of it.”

Sharon sat on her heels atop the couch cushion. The television opened on a bizarre, atonal and deeply ahistorical sacrifice scene. “Is this really—?” she asked.

“Yes,” said Aunt Peggy, and put one arm around her shoulders. “Watch for it…”

_“Help! I need somebody! Help! Not just anybody! Help! You know I need somebody! Help!”_

Sharon giggled into the sleeves of her sweatshirt. She glanced up at Aunt Peggy, to let her know she was enjoying it; she relaxed utterly to see that Aunt Peggy was grinning too.


	35. Peggy, for the first time, after the war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEC. 29 2015  
> theladyscribe: Peggy Carter, falling in love again after the war

A cast of light, a belly laugh, maybe even a smile — there came a time, some time after she left Europe behind her, when Peggy’s heart bloomed in response to some stimulus and she realized it was just for her. It was not wrong to want to live because all her lost boys couldn’t, nor even because her own youth had been stolen by the grinding terror and responsibility of adventure and service. But it was heavy, and it was hard. When Peggy felt herself open up simply for the joy of it, for her own sake, without flinching, her own excitement at the thought of a long life was a sudden downpour that she passed through and shivered in, after.


	36. Peggy meets JARVIS

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> DEC. 29 2015  
> cosmictuesdays: Peggy Carter meeting JARVIS.

The voice on the other end of her carphone raised two questions for Peggy: one, she hadn’t been aware the Starks had hired a new butler, and two, the damn carphone was subject to some very distracting sort of electronic buzz, which could be interference or tapping or any number of other things.

“I’m calling for Mr. Howard Stark,” she said, more clearly.

“I’m sorry,” said the voice, in a pleasant and professional RP. “I’m not able to confirm your identity, Miss…?”

“Director,” she said, glancing at her driver. “Tell Mr. Stark that Director Carter is on her way back from the airport, and she’s rather annoyed that he’s screening her—”

“H’yello? Aunt Peggy, that you?”

Her lips thinned. “Good morning, Tony. I didn’t expect you to be up.”

“Haven’t slept. JARVIS, tell my dad he’s got a call. This vocal signature’s always a go.”

“Very good, sir. Director Carter.”

Peggy sat in the backseat and blinked. She could almost see the unknown fellow clicking his heels and bowing. Tony’s voice had no distortion at all. “What was that?”

“JARVIS,” said Tony, with studied carelessness. “I’ve been working on him. Still a few kinks in the vocal generator.”

“Is that so?” One corner of her mouth did curl a little. Edwin had been gone for nearly a year, though Ana still lived in their quarters at the Los Angeles residence.

“Yeah,” said Tony. “Just a Rather Very Intelligent System.”

“Is that so,” said Peggy, and she smiled.


	37. "Who will see this?"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Regarding [that interview footage](http://sevensneakyfoxes.tumblr.com/post/138961790434) at the Smithsonian exhibit.

“Who will see this?”

“It’s for posterity,” Sousa said. “Maybe a recruitment video. Nothing meaty. Sorry to put this on you, but you…” He scratched the back of his head. “You can vet the questions if you like — obviously we don’t want to expose any—”

“That’s a given.” Peggy skimmed the memo again. There was a trap in this somewhere. “‘Oral history.’ That’s all the rage among the historian set, I take it? We wouldn’t want to miss out on a keen new fad.”

Sousa shrugged. “Social science is a science too, I guess. Strategically, scientifically speaking.”

*

He was an unassuming man, too young to fight the last war and exempt from the current one. “Again, I can’t thank you enough for your time, Agent Carter,” he said, and rested one ankle on his knee. “It’s a real honor.”

She smiled. “Well, it’s my pleasure. How would you like to start?”

The interviewer — his name was Patrick, he was from Arizona, he’d been approached by Treasury once but chose to go into communications; of course she had checked up on him — adjusted his glasses. “We can ease into it. There’s a lot to cover. Your office said you’d be made available for several hours, correct?” He smiled with one half of his mouth, a little cornball. “I’ve got that many questions, after all.”

“Yes, I saw.” Peggy crossed her ankles, which brought her forward in the seat and straightened her spine. “I’d be happy to touch on anything we can talk about on the record.”

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” he said, frowning a little at her posture. “I’d like this to be more conversational. We’ll edit it down, don’t worry. It should sound natural.”

“All right. If that’s the intent.” She glanced at the camera, with its impassive lens and already-rolling film.

Patrick opened a small notebook. “And you don’t mind follow-up questions as I think of them, do you?”

“I’ll answer to the best of my ability.”

And she did. She told him all sorts of delicious tidbits and insider nonsense and nothing a rookie in the intelligence community couldn’t brag about. She knew the story she had to tell: competence, honor, cleverness, daring. Charm. “Wow,” he’d say, and she’d smile, or not. Peggy had had interrogation training. This was simply keeping her from admittedly dull paperwork.

“And we can meet again tomorrow?” he asked, as he switched off the machine. “I’d like to touch on more of the SSR stuff, if you don’t mind.”

She studied him. “Again, only as much as has been declassified.”

“I’ve spoken with many of your colleagues, Agent,” he said. He watched her back, keenly. “I’d just love to hear your view of events.”

Peggy stopped for a drink after. “How was it?” Sousa asked.

She shook her head. “I’m doing you a tremendous favor.”

“It had to be you,” he said. “It could only be you.“

At that, she contemplated her whisky. “Yes.” That wasn’t an air raid siren — just an ambulance off in the distance.

She slept poorly that night. She woke before dawn, her mouth cotton and her chest a vise.

*

That’s what a good interviewer does, of course. You make your subject comfortable, you are friendly, you probe for the nuggets of truth and emotion. That’s where the history is. That’s what people come to see. Not power, not the inside scoop, not a consummate professional still fighting her way through the ranks and through the world. People come for the emotion, not the plot. That’s how stories get remembered.

Peggy stared, stricken, at the unfeeling lens. “Who will see this?”

Patrick frowned. “I’m sorry…?”

“Turn it off,” she said, her voice shaking. “Turn that _off_.”


End file.
